The British suffered from almost 60,000 casualties on the first day of the battle. Of those, almost 20,000 soldiers died alongside 7,000 French and 8,000 German soldiers. Sixty per cent of British officers involved in the first day of fighting were killed.

Despite appalling losses, the battle produced minimal gains for either side. The remainder of the battle quickly devolved into trench warfare, and upwards of 1,000,000 soldiers were killed or wounded.

Below, we have pulled archival images from the archives that show the terror of a battle that started 98 years ago today.

British soldiers stand near their machine guns at the Somme front in 1916.